potentialities

Now, you might be thinking that watching Olympics coverage 11+ hours a day doesn't leave much time for reading. And you would be correct. Still, I did manage to finish some books this week!

What I've been reading

I read The Captive & The Fugitive, volumes five and six of À la recherche du temps perdu. Ha! Bet you weren't expecting that, were you! Technically, I actually read the end of The Captive and all of The Fugitive, having begun reading slightly less than a year ago, gotten bogged down on how unrelentingly terrible a pairing narrator/Albertine is, and set it aside for the interim. Seriously, though, they are the worst canon pairing ever. Literally all the narrator does for pretty much both entire volumes is obsess about how much lesbian sex he thinks Albertine has had/is having/would be having if he didn't keep her trapped in his house like a jealous weirdo. Also I'm disappointed that there isn't any Proust fic out there, because I totally want some narrator/Saint-Loup.

I read Rapture Practice, a memoir by a gay kid who grew up in my hometown (okay, in my hometown's metro area) and whose fundie/indie/Baptist childhood was approximately a thousand times worse than my own. It was really well-written, although I was disappointed that he ended his story before he came out to his parents; it feels a little like wrapping up your murder mystery after clearing up all the red herrings but before revealing who the actual murderer is.

I read Love All & Busman's Honeymoon, two plays by Dorothy L. Sayers. I knew, of course, that Busman's Honeymoon had been a play before it was a novel (and can you imagine how frustrated and enraged you would be, if you knew that there was a sequel to Gaudy Night out there somewhere on a stage and you couldn't go see it?), but I had never actually read the play, or the other play, which is a comedy of manners about authors, appropriately enough. I had never really given much thought to what staging Busman's Honeymoon as a play would require, either, and it is actually quite problematic considering ( spoilers regarding the ending )

What I'm reading next

Well, certainly Time Regained, although probably after I regain the time I am currently devoting to watching winter sporting events.

Oh, I am the luckiest girl in all of fandom today, and I win at New Year's Resolutions (Recipient Division, that is) for all time, because today spintheiryarns/custardpringle posted A Jolly Kind of Detective Game, her epic fantabulous Hilary/St. George casefic flipping masterpiece, which I have just spent a lovely long Sunday afternoon (and, okay, well into a Sunday evening) reading.

Hilary/St. George is, to begin with, the pairing that is the nearest to my heart, because so far as I can tell it is an idea that did not exist at all in the world until the day it popped into my head, and then because I wrote about it and requested it for Yuletide it turned into this actual thing that people who are not me read and write and ship, which is more or less actual literal magic as far as I am concerned. I'm getting kind of choked up now just thinking about it. Fandom. ♥

And now it is my über rarepair in my teeny tiny fandom that has this glorious novel with its gorgeous, intricate emotional arc and its absolutely smoldering sexual tension, which pays off in the most utterly compelling touches and kisses and sex, oh my god the sex, and all this in a story which also contains bantering, detecting, much hurting and comforting, a whole community of wonderful original characters including queer characters and characters of color for the story to take place among, and the absolute funniest and most apposite chapter-heading tags ever selected. Is it any wonder that I'm looking smug today? (And believe me, I am looking most exceedingly smug.)

This is the single most happy-making fic I have ever read. Everyone should read it and rejoice with me.

I have just worked out from the Lord Peter Wimsey Internal Chronology that Hilary Thorpe and St. George must have been up at Oxford together, although it is evident that Hilary did not attend Shrewsbury, or Lord Peter would have certainly spotted her charming red head.

I have a new OTP and they have never even met.

And thus, a poll:

[Poll #1252604]

Because I have it and I think that the rest of you should share in my glee and also because it is very short and takes very little typing, because I am lazy.

This was written for "A Tribute to Sherlock Holmes on the Occasion of his 100th Birthday", a BBC radio programme broadcast on 8 January 1954.

( The Young Lord Peter Consults Sherlock Holmes )

This text was reprinted in Sayers on Holmes, which has the somewhat dubious distinction of being the slenderest volume I own. However, as I learned absolutely everything I know about scholarly writing from reading all this fabulous Holmesian scholarship at the tender age of 12, and I got it basically for free in Amazon's 4-for-3 promotion, it was well worth it.

Just as I was pondering the logistics of a Sherlock Holmes/Lord Peter Wimsey crossover for nagasvoice, I discover that it's already been done.

By Dorothy L. Sayers, no less.

Although $8 for a book just 66 pages long is not exactly cheap, you can see why I'm simply going to have to have this book.